WHY LITTLE ITALY SHOULD INSPIRE LOCAL DEVELOPMENT
Have you been to Little Italy lately? Did you hang out in Piazza del Famiglia (the square) while eating an ice cream? Or maybe you grabbed a fancy cocktail at Kettner Exchange while listening to house music? Or maybe you stopped by Our Lady of the Rosary on the way to brunch? If you’re like me, I often leave Little Italy breathless and dazed. How did this old cornerstone of San Diego get so exciting in the last 20 years?
Little Italy can and should be the blueprint for development in San Diego. We’re starving for culture and activity. And if you’re like me, San Diego’s slow pace and charm has started to feel overwhelmed in the last decade. It feels unusually crowded. The housing market is insane. Long-tenured residents are leaving because they believe our city is past its prime. But it doesn’t have to feel this way! I believe we can build denser neighborhoods that still have that classic San Diego pace and charm.
The issue is that we’re building our city in the wrong way. Look at the huge apartment complexes in Mission Valley and Mira Mesa. These developments solve a critical San Diego problem: housing. But they lack a space for shared culture. This type of development creates an imbalance between the growing number of people and the capacity of our cultural focal points to absorb them. Without a built environment to participate in, these residents seek out traditional neighborhoods for authenticity and culture. How do we solve this? Do we build up walls around our older neighborhoods to shut people out? Tell them to construct their own cultural spaces? Or can we act more conscientiously and work to renew our neighborhoods in ways that bring more people in?
We can’t sprawl forever. Villages like those in Clairemont, Hillcrest, South Park, La Mesa and others should take up planning models that encourage high-density, mixed-use apartments along their main corridors. By preserving preexisting architectural elements, new complexes have the opportunity to promote thriving community centers that maintain the heritage of each neighborhood. The benefits are numerous.
Increased density promotes walking, the use of shared services and access to local restaurants and shops due to increased foot traffic. This means better public health, improved efficiency for city services, and, hopefully, more burritos per square mile. Urban renewal will allow us to build smarter grid structures that make us more resilient, sustainable and efficient. Mixed-use buildings will allow us to bring offices closer to homes, which should free up our freeways a bit more.
Little Italy is a prime example of neighborhood-based renewal. Long-term property owners understood the value of investing in multi-use complexes that strengthen the community without sacrificing the cultural heritage. The bars, breweries, cafes and restaurants are sleek but welcoming. The streets are packed, but it feels homely and recognizable. Teenagers, parents and grannies all converge. It only seems crowded because everyone in San Diego wants to participate in its authenticity and liveliness.
I recognize that there are some lucky homeowners with a pristine view who fear that new high rises will diminish their property values. Some residents may be worried that tall buildings will bring more traffic. Others may have anxiety that new development will strip neighborhoods of their history and charm. Opposition on these grounds has arisen recently in Hillcrest, Old Town and Point Loma. Thoughtful discussion and hope, not fear, should lead us as we get bigger as a city. A new high rise may frame one’s view more elegantly. A multi-use complex may encourage the city to clean up your local bus stop and run it more frequently. Higher density may finally put a business tenant in that closed-down store on your block.
Growing up is never easy, even as a city. It’s filled with uncertainty and doubt. It requires us to learn how to sacrifice and give back. But ultimately, these are the things that allow us to grow even more.
As San Diego moves past its collective adolescent youth, I hope that we can look forward to growing up a little bit more.
Huge apartment complexes in Mission Valley and Mira Mesa solve a critical San Diego problem: housing. But they lack the spaces for shared culture that have made Little Italy so special.